Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Germany will give 600 million euros
($800 million) to the world’s biggest disease-fighting fund, two
years after suspending payments amid concern some grants to poor
countries were being stolen or misused.

Germany will give 200 million euros a year from 2014 to
2016 to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,
Dirk Niebel, the nation’s minister for economic cooperation and
development, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos,
Switzerland, today. The pledge extends a commitment of 200
million euros a year Germany made for 2012 and 2013.

The donation is a boost for Executive Director Mark Dybul,
who took over at the Geneva-based fund this week and is on a
money-raising mission as he seeks to capitalize on scientific
advances that he said hold the potential to end epidemics of the
world’s three biggest infectious killers. Failing to invest may
jeopardize gains against the diseases, he said.

“We are a wealthy world still,” Dybul said in a telephone
interview from Davos. “We can afford to do this, and we cannot
afford not to do this.”

The Global Fund has spent $19 billion since 2002 fighting
the three diseases. It has received or has been promised $29
billion since 2002 by countries, charities such as the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and companies including Chevron Corp.

Human Impact

“The Global Fund specializes in these disease,” Bill
Gates, the founder and chairman of Microsoft Corp., told
reporters in Davos today. “If we don’t deal with them, not only
do the numbers get larger, but the impact on the human
condition, the impact on the economies involved, is really quite
tragic.”

Michel Kazatchkine, Dybul’s predecessor, quit a year ago
today after a review in 2011 that found the organization lacked
sufficient safeguards to prevent abuse of grants by recipients.

Germany suspended its payments to the fund in 2011, and
resumed them last year after the organization announced new
measures to improve financial oversight. The country has pledged
or given $1.79 billion since 2002, not including today’s
announcement, making it the fourth-largest donor behind the
U.S., France and the U.K., according to data on the fund’s
website.